‘The hive, then, extends itself as part of the environment through the social probing that individual bees enact where the intelligence of the interaction is not located in any one bee, or even a collective of bees as a stable unit, but in the “in-between” space of becoming: bees relating to the mattering milieu, which becomes articulated as a continuum to the social behavior of the insect community. This community is not based on representational content, then, but on distributed organization of the society of nonhuman actors.” (K. Von Frisch)

TV BUG | Channel 01 |  Lionel Groulx Metro Station (Montreal) | AR Marker and Video still  | 2013 | John Naccarato

As a child I’d spend countless hours observing and tracking insects – grasshoppers, ants, butterflies – in a field behind my house. I was fascinated with their hidden and mysterious worlds. They occupied the same space I did and yet seemed distant and alien. They went about their day to day rituals almost indifferent to my existence until of course our paths converged. I remember one such occasion, when running through a field, my presence triggered a chain reaction, one in which hundreds of grasshoppers suddenly leaped forward in escape.

Our relationship to insects and their seemingly invisible world, colors our perceptions and experiences in profound and uncountable ways – from real life encounters to metaphors about our fears and problems.

We readily appropriate insects – their form, actions and seemingly alien-like existence for use in sci-fi and horror movies. Or to define an error, failure or fault in a system and program – a computer bug. Or our health – there’s a bug going around. Of course there’s also reference to surveillance – the planting of bugs to eavesdrop on unsuspecting participants or more recently, the military’s development of Cyborg Insect Drones for surveillance purposes.

TV Bug uses this appropriative and metaphorical play on insect space to play off and interfere with 4 more spaces in our ‘real’ world experiencing: 2D (Screens / TV, Computer); Digital (Coding/software); Physical (Space we occupy) and lastly, Augmented (mobile).

The visual and audio footage which make up ‘TV BUG’ were appropriated from five different sources: David Attenborough – Life in the Undergrowth (BBC 2005); V/H/S (Magnet Releasing 2012); Ashes to Ashes (BBC 2008); Three hours and 19 minutes of 4×3 snow (YouTube); The Sound of Cicadas – Amazing Noise of Dense Cicadas (YouTube), and Êt $1 Øn &”¥ më∏àît èÑ∫!n ¿ (Nocturno Motoculto).

And lastly, ‘TV BUG’ was developed in conjunction with ‘TV BUG (AR)’. ‘TV BUG (AR)’ is a public space intervention using Augmented Reality (AR) mobile technology to pin selected video sequences from ‘TV BUG’ to specific GPS locations in and around Montreal, Canada. Access to and the experiencing of these augmented sequences is via any smart device (phone, pad, and tablet).

War of the Worlds Revisited (in progress) created and presented @ Musitk (Montreal): June 30, July 01, 2012

Inspired in part by Orson Welles ‘The War of the Worlds’ radio drama broadcast. The original broadcast was aired via The Mercury Theatre and CBS on Halloween night – October 30, 1938. The episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds.

In this AR (Augmented Reality) adaptation, we – hack space – and explore the power of media as an intervention to alter and augment the participants reality at any given moment – especially if the media’s content is experienced out of context.

Created by John Naccarato and Shereen Soliman

i Believe | Text Based AR Public Intervention Project | Live Camera AR Still | 2011 | John Naccarato

During the first half of 2011, I looked at the potential of Augmented Reality mobile technology (AR) for creating awareness around issues of public and private space.  The project ‘i Believe’ came into existence in part due to a previous project ‘Intimacy in Public Space: Site Specific Performance & Interventionist Work with New Media’ in which I and fellow artist (Sarah Nesbitt) had curated during the Art Matters Festival (Montreal, 2007) The project had involved a series of performance-based interventions where artists were asked to create intimate moments between themselves and the public questioning notions about intimacy or lack thereof, within public spaces.

With ‘i Believe’, the focus became the alarming escalation of condo developments in Montreal which I felt was gutting the cultural and social infrastructure of the city. This rise in condo development seemed to be catering to a small niche of the population with no clear philosophy by its developers as to their impact on the neighbourhoods and the city itself. Furthermore, Montreal’s condo development had triggered a mass gentrification of low income rental and historic areas.

I decided that perhaps the best way to approach this issue would be to create a psychogeographical study, one which could help critique and understand how major shifts in a city’s infrastructure affects memory, identity and ritual play. As a tool, AR was perfect since it allowed for virtual objects such as text, sound, 2D/3D image and video to remain hidden in public space until participants were made aware of their presence.

One example of the project ‘i Believe’, was where text was used as an AR object to trigger awareness of a particular green space being used as a public throughway. The text was only visible through the use of a smart device (mobile phone/pad/tablet) and only when participants were near the general area. Via their smart device participants could witness a six foot high black text ‘i believe’ intersecting onto the path which appeared to be blocking their way. Even though the text was virtual and overlaid onto the physical space being viewed, the text’s apparent real presence was powerful and profound.

Perhaps for me the most important aspect of such an AR interaction was how one’s action leaves behind an intimate trace or memory imprint which can be shared with others. It creates a very private moment in a highly public space. Of course the inverse is true when a large block of concrete and mortar – a condo – stands in your way, negating any form of intimacy or public interaction.

Some questions which arose from the project were:

1.  How does the experiencing of the AR event affect or alter the participant’s relationship to that specific space? Can the existence of the AR text affect the space even without the participants’ awareness of its existence?
2. Does the participant carry the residual memory imprints of that specific experience with them, so that if they return to the specific place, they remember the experience – even if they no longer see the object?